


Sorrynotsorry

by taylor_tut



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Drowning, Gen, Nightmares, Sick Character, Sick Lance, Sickfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-05
Updated: 2017-07-05
Packaged: 2018-11-23 17:12:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,501
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11406876
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/taylor_tut/pseuds/taylor_tut
Summary: From a prompt on my tumblr for Lance really sick and having vivid nightmares he deliriously thinks are real.





	Sorrynotsorry

Lance bolted up in bed with a gasp and immediately allowed his head to sink to his knees doubled over. His head throbbed mercilessly, so badly that the lights in the room seemed to be dimming and brightening with his own heartbeat, and there was an intense ringing in his ears… was Allura sounding the alarms? It didn’t sound quite the same, so he let himself just turn over and get a few more minutes of sleep before he’d get up to meet the other paladins for breakfast…

And there it was. The alarms, without a shred of doubt this time. Lance still felt awful, but dragged himself up anyway.

Suddenly, he was in the common room. Everyone was in armor, but Lance seemed to have forgotten his. Why would he try to fend off an attack without his armor?

Shiro seemed to feel the same way. “Lance,” he bit, sounding in no way sympathetic to the way it made him wince. “You’re not ready for battle.”

Lance wanted to reply, wanted to apologize, wanted to leave and change as quickly as possible. But suddenly, his shoes were frozen to the floor, and no matter how hard he tried to pick up his feet, the thick ice surrounding them wouldn’t break apart. The ice worked its way up his legs, reaching out for more and more of his body with tendrils so cold they took his breath away.

“Shiro,” he gasped, but when he looked up at their leader, he was entirely encased in ice. Lance fell backward, and the freezing cold immediately overtook his fingers, welding both his hands, then his wrists to the floor, and locking his elbows painfully. “Hunk? Keith? Pidge?” he tried, but glancing from one to the other revealed that the same fate was slowly but surely claiming the rest of his friends, too. 

Keith swung his bayard, hacking away at the ice that had enveloped Shiro.

“No!” Lance shouted, but it was too late–Shiro had already been shattered to 1000 pieces.

Keith looked horrified, and stumbled backward, but was able to do nothing but fall back into a heap. The ice claimed his hands as well, and another quick survey of the room filled Lance’s eyes with tears as he noticed that Pidge and Hunk were both frozen in pained, horrific, grotesque statues.

“Lance, do something!” Keith cried, “your bayard!”

“I–I don’t have it,” Lance admitted. “I left it in my room!” 

The ice sculptures that were Pidge and Hunk began melting, filling the room with water–more water than Lance felt made sense. It lapped at his face until he was struggling to keep his head above it. Every so often, he found himself choking on a lungful of it, painful and terrifying. 

“You could have saved us,” Allura’s voice came over the comms, “but it’s too late; it’s too late now, Lance!” She was shrieking in a desperate tone Lance had never heard her use before.

The water claimed the Castle. 

Lance shot out of bed this time, panting on his hands and knees on the floor. The castle was ruined, he could tell. While it seemed like he’d survived the drowning, he was still freezing cold, and his lungs ached from the trauma they’d undergone.

The others. He had to find the other paladins. Maybe it was too late for Shiro, and maybe Hunk and Pidge too, but Keith could have survived just as he had. Someone had to have put him in his bed, after all. 

Despite the aching in his head and lungs and the fact that everything spun when he stood, Lance sprinted toward the door but stopped short.

His bayard. He needed to be ready for whatever was beyond the precipice of his room. It felt heavy in his hands, but he dragged himself to the common room anyway, leaning heavily on the wall the whole way there. 

“Hey, Lance is awake!” Hunk said cheerfully, “have a nice nap, buddy?”

Lance stared at him, blinking slowly. He’d survived after all?

“Someone wakes up stupid,” Pidge taunted. She was here, too? His eyes filled with tears and he angrily swiped them away with the back of his hand.

“Pidge, Hunk, Keith,” he breathed, “you’re all okay?”

Keith looked confused. “Why wouldn’t we be?” 

Lance breathed in a dangerously hitchy breath and coughed the air back out. 

“Uh, Lance?” a voice called, “did you have a nightmare?” 

Shiro. 

It was Shiro.

Shiro whom he’d let down. Shiro whom he’d watched shatter. Shiro would never forgive him.

“I’m sorry,” Lance mumbled, collapsing against Shiro’s chest as soon as he was close enough. 

“Hey, woah, it’s okay,” Shiro chuckled. “Looks like you had a heck of a nightmare, buddy,” he continued. “Hunk, water?”

He tried to be optimistic, but anxiety twisted in his gut like a knife when Lance took several more heaving breaths and didn’t seem to get any more coherent. 

“Oh god, I’m so sorry. M’so sorry.”

“Lance, breathe,” Keith tried to command, his authority undercut by the silver glint of worry.

“S’my fault and I’m so sorry,” he kept muttering, over and over again. Pidge shut her laptop but didn’t move. 

“…he… okay?” someone asked, and someone else pressed a cold hand to his forehead and cheeks. Lance fought them off–no matter what he was feeling, no matter what had happened to him, he was the best off of all the paladins.

“…on fire,” someone replied, cursing when Lance tensed in his grasp. “get Allura…–need… look at me. Can you look at me?”

Lance would do anything at this point. 

When he finally managed to focus his vision for just a moment, he was met with Shiro’s worried gaze and Hunk hovering behind him, holding out a water pouch.

“You feel like you can stomach water?” Hunk asked. Lance nodded, but as soon as the straw was pressed to his mouth, he was breathing it in rather than drinking, and the icy water was in his lungs again. 

Damn it. He’d just messed this up. He wouldn’t let himself kill them again. Lance reached for his bayard, but Pidge slid it away from his wandering fingers. 

“How about no,” she said gently.

Lance absolutely panicked. Suddenly, he was muttering about how he’d killed them, and how he’d let them down, and how he alone was responsible for the demise of the whole entire universe. The castle. His planet. His mother.

He wasn’t consolable, even despite Allura’s best efforts.

“Sedate him?” Keith parroted. “Isn’t that overkill?”

“It’s the only way we’ll–ouch, Lance, stop punching,” Shiro admonished, “the only way we’ll get him to rest.”

Pidge had been doing something, Lance wasn’t sure what, but whatever answer she was looking for sounded like it wasn’t good, because they gasped when she called out, “105.1.”

And then it was dark.

When Lance came to, Pidge was the only one still awake. The room was dark, but her laptop was illuminating her face just enough to see that it was pinched with stress.

“Time’s’it?” Lance slurred.

“Lance!” she cried. The noise woke the other paladins, who looked just as relieved as she did. “It’s late,” she admitted when he didn’t look satisfied having not received an answer to his question. “Do you remember anything?”

Lance paled. “The–the attack,” he breathed. His eyes filled with tears.

“Attack?” Shiro repeated. 

“I thought you’d died,” Lance trembled. Shiro’s jaw set. “And I didn’t know what was attacking. I didn’t bring my bayard because I didn’t feel well, but that was stupid of me, and I know I let you down but please don’t kick me off the team–”

There was a beeping that kept getting louder and faster until it was nearly deafening. “Lance,” Allura intervened. “You’re still very ill. If you can’t stay calm, I’m going to have to ask your visitors to leave.”

“I–visitors?” 

“Everyone’s okay, buddy,” Hunk reassured him. “You’re sick. We were going to ask you why you didn’t tell anyone you weren’t feeling well, but it seems like you were already pretty out of your mind feverish by the time you even knew.”

“It was just a nightmare,” Keith informed him. “Nothing happened. We were just hanging out when you raced in yelling like a lunatic about ice monsters and Shiro being dead.”

“You had us worried,” Shiro added. “You were suddenly so sick and so panicked, and none of us knew what was wrong.” 

“Oh,” Lance replied. He’d kept up with only some of the explanation, but enough to know that the attack had been just a dream. “I didn’t know,” he admitted, “and I don’t remember much. I’m s–”

“Don’t,” Keith cut him off, “that word is banned from your vocabulary for a while. Just get some sleep, okay?”

Lance smiled. “Sounds like a plan, mullet.”

“Hey!”

“Oh, oops! Was that rude? I’d apologize, but someone told me I’m not allowed.”

“Don’t abuse it.”

“Whatever you say, fingerless glove guy.”

“Lance!”


End file.
